villager, whose name was mohammed ali, going with his brothers on an ordinary errand. they took their camels and rode up to a cliff which is honeycombed with thousands of caves. they were digging under the cliffs for fertilizer, that is for bird droppings, which fertilized the crops. and mohammed ali said his... he struck something when he was digging underground. and curious, he kept digging, and he was startled to find a six-foot jar, sealed, and next to it was buried a corpse. mohammed ali said he hesitated to break the jar because he thought there might be a jinn in it. but hope overcame fear. he said he picked up his mattock and smashed the jar and saw particles of gold fly out of it, much to his delight. but a moment later, he realized it was only pieces of... fragments of papyrus. inside the jar were 13 volumes bound in tooled gazelle leather. >> narrator: what mohammed ali had discovered were books written in the ancient egyptian language known as coptic. unable to read them, ali took them home. >> later, his mother said that she took some of them and threw them into the
